In modern India, an increasingly large number of women are engaged in the informal economy operating in the small scale sectors. With proper governmental and societal support, these women can create sustainable organized and growth oriented enterprises. Nowadays, women leaders are assertive, persuasive and willing to take risks to stand tall from the rest of the crowd in their respective fields. Women entrepreneurship is seen as an effective strategy to solve the problems of rural and urban poverty. This potential is to be recognized and exposed for utilization in productive service sectors for the development of the nation. In a recent survey it is revealed that the female entrepreneurs from India are generating more wealth than the women in any part of the world.
One of the women entrepreneurs to survive and succeed in this cut throat competition with hard work, diligence and perseverance is Priya Sachdev, Sales Director of Miller Heiman Group. For the past 26 years, Priya has been a sales practitioner. She began her journey as a field sales professional and gradually moved up to be a sales manager and then as a P&L leader. In 2011, Priya started her own business venture and aligned it to the Miller Heiman Group strategic vision for India in 2017. Today as a Sales Director and being part of the APAC team, Miller Heiman Group are investing in building their presence in India.
Words of Inspiration that led to Success
Persistence and playfulness are the two things that keep Priya aligned to focus on her goals. Many women feel being ambitious and goal oriented is being masculine dimension but for Priya, there is no other way to achieve the goals rather than having a laser sharp focus. Being a business leader, Priya says “It is important to prioritize and pick 20% of the things that need to be done which will give you 80% of your results and ensure you stay focused on this.”
For Priya, being women has been a secondary dimension in business; the first one is being a effective business leader. Today, her success can be summed up in a single phrase that she believes, is the philosophy of her life – “Gain Mind share, Get wallet share”. This really defines her work towards keeping the customer at the center and then working on whatever it takes to gain their mind share. While there is always a quota to achieve in business, gaining mind share always gets that result as the outcome, delivering on customers’ needs. It is to work with them to co-create instead of looking at tactics to push just products and services. As one works in a business organizations there will be unconscious and conscious biases by others about the roles women will play and how they play them, yet it’s important to get the things done and not over think the means to the end.
The Cornerstone of Sales Growth and Business Transformation
The Miller Heiman Group is a sales and service performance management and consulting organization. They partner with several organizations to enable them to sell more and offer services in a better way, by bringing to them globally validated and researched intellectual property and frameworks. At present, they are investing in developing digital and technology tools using AI and Data analytics to ensure organizations can do more with less effort. The firm has been engaged with companies from IT services to Industrial products, Healthcare & BFSI such as GE, Vodafone, ITC InfoTech, Tata Aig, and Mindtree which gave them encouraging feedbacks from their clients in India. With more than 60+ offices in more than 40 countries along with nearly 350 full-time employees, consultants and contractors, and more than 70 distribution and franchise partners—the group is growing at more than 2.5x the rest of the sales and service industry.
An Entrepreneur’s Passionate Thoughts
Priya is engaged with number of women who have started their own businesses and realized that most often they pick something they are really passionate about and miss to act on the basic ground work that is required for setting up a new business. Creating a business plan, identifying the constraints and the differentiators by doing market research around the product and offering is the key to increase the probability of business success. Being smart in setting up a business is a critical factor to success. As one starts a business life, one has to calculate her own salary from the beginning. Only passion driving the business instead of looking out for commercial success is never a good sign for anyone in the business – men or women alike.
The biggest challenge in business is to stay true to your positioning and to learn to say ‘NO’ early in cases, if the customer needs are not aligned to their core competence. Many times entrepreneurs get distracted by going beyond their core competence just because the customer is willing to give them a small amount of work in that space. This distraction bleeds on resources and while in short term it seems the right thing to do, in the long term it creates a negative bottom line impact. Priya said “Stay focused and say no if it doesn’t fit your story rather than spread your resources too thin.”
Portraiting a Bright Future
Building a high performance team is getting tougher in today’s market and she is hoping it is possible to overcome this constraint by leveraging technology and new platforms. Priya claims “We want to become a leader in the space we operate in and getting encouragement from our clients gives me the validation that we are on the right track.” There is validation of this as they are having more engagement on transformational projects where their customers get higher returns of their investments by working with them. Priya works through a vision with the only concern being to find like-minded people who can work within their team.
Source :-The 10 Successful Business Women To Watch In 2018
Priya Sachdev: A Contributor in Sales Performance Best Practices of World Class Sales Organizations
